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I recently posted about my very unsatisfactory experience with service personnel while attempting to get a few problems fixed on my Renault Megane.
The mechanics had no clue about how to fix them, but a factory reset of the on-board computer (like on current personal computing devices) did the trick.

I inferred from this fact that updating the software, again like in personal computing devices, was the way to go to avoid facing the same problems in the future and started my long journey to accomplish this.

I followed the manufacturer instructions and downloaded the software downloader on my notebook, inserted in it a 8GB USB flash drive previously initialized in the car and, after a byzantine procedure requiring web interaction to select the updates that then the application would fetch, I started downloading.
Again. And again. And again…

What looked strange is that the download counter made it to the full size, but then continued!
After a few dozens attempts all failed in the same way and with no success in sight I decided to get in touch with the country support.

As a reply to my first contact I received a cut&paste of the standard procedure.
This is a fairly common practice in every sector and makes a lot of sense because most people is not reading the manuals.

Unfortunately I was already following the standard procedure so I replied back with more data including the fact that to get 5.4GB of updated maps the tool had downloaded already over 113GB (from a non-Renault domain) without success.
The solution proposed was to use a larger flash drive.
I could not obtain from them an answer about why to get 5.4GB an empty 8GB drive was not enough.
And a 16GB drive was not a fix for the problem anyway.

During the fruitless exchanges with the support I kept attempting the download until it finally worked. On the 8GB drive.
I believed that even if this was not communicated to me they had fixed whichever issue there was and I was happy with that.

A few months later I found out that it was just one lucky astral alignment.
The situation is back where it was: tens of downloads attempts needed to get an updated version of the maps and failed downloads leave the flash drive in an inconsistent state where the car tries the update anyway only to fail after a few minutes.

I was guessing in my earlier post that the challenges I faced were due to the time needed for the knowledge to move from the top of the manufacturer organization to the service people.
But from my experience attempting to do the software update it looks like I was wrong: even at the country level the manufacturer appears unable to support the smartness they are putting in the vehicles.

According to the discussions I had with a few colleagues in the office other manufacturers have a much smoother user experience.
In my opinion Renault really needs to evolve quickly to stay relevant.

A few months ago I started to drive a 4th generation Renault Megane in the (Italian) Bose trim:
in this version you get almost as many gadgets as possible.

While they all work driving the car is a very enjoyable experience for the vehicle class, but as soon as problems started to appear and I was looking for a fix, I realized that the support personnel was left behind in the product evolution.

After a few months the electric massage seat and the lumbar support stopped to work, some time later the rear cam did not disengage anymore as soon as moving forward, after some more time parking sensors stopped working and also the lane assist stopped to produce the sound feedback, finally the HUD was resetting the position to default every time I was turning off the engine.

I an attempt to get the issues resolved I have contacted 3 different mechanics from the official support network getting vague statements about what the problem could be, but all of them agreed that it would take multiple days to get it fixed. One stated “for electric problems you need to plan at least a 3-days stop”.
I tried contacting the online support describing the issue and all I got back was the link to the list of services.

None of the mechanics offered a replacement car during the troubleshooting and repair even if the vehicle is well within the warranty period: very upsetting.
I started planning the right time to bring the car in when I could stay without it for an extended period of time when, by pure chance, I ended in a menu of the car computer that offered a reset to factory defaults.
Having some past experience with consumer electronics I decided to trigger it counting on the fact that worst case if the car stopped completely I could call the service to pick it up free of charge.
With my surprise all of the problems I was having suddenly disappeared.

How it is possible that not only 3 authorized services had no clue about this basic troubleshooting, but also the online support did not come up with the advice to reset?

In my opinion putting cars ahead of the support structure is not a safe bet.
Not for the for the manufactured nor for the consumers.

Microsoft sends me a periodic email (TechNet Flash Newsletter) listing the news related to their product and ecosystem that I read in a sporadic way, but a few weeks ago thanks to the Christmas holidays I had a bit of extra time and read through one containing an invite to a challenge on hackster.io.

Joining the community was quick and straightforward.
After a few days I put in an idea for the challenge pre-contest and earlier today I found out that it was selected and I should get the Genuino MKR1000 to make it a reality.

Tools are installed on my W10 phone and notebook ready to consume my week-end spare time for the next 46 days.

I believe this marketing initiative is a very smart one giving good visibility of MS tools in the IoT space to the people who should really care (developers and tinkerers) and can create the tools, applications and devices that will feed the Azure infrastructure with major volumes of data in the coming years.

Like this:

I posted about my early experiences with this technology about 8 months ago here and here.

At the time of these posts the apartment was perfectly empty except for the adapter and the notebook I was using.
Now, after a full renovation including the electrical infrastructure, it is a real home with all the associated devices and appliances connected and operating.
Another important change is that, due to the limits of the electrical tubing connecting upper and lower level, I had to connect the two levels using the same technology and now I have in place 4 adapters from the same manufacturer.

What I read right now in the monitor from the upper level is:
110 Mbit/s to the lower level
70 Mbit/s to the garage
60 Mbit/s to the underground room.

To the garage what I get at the application level moving data to the garage is about 3MB/s (a bit shy of 30Mbit/s) when using a backup program targeting a share on the LS220D and about half of this when using directly a samba share on the same device to move files with windows explorer.

The number reported are in the lowest range of the day and they can easily get 30% better than this depending on the amount of electrical noise tha is injected on the line from the other apartments on my building.

Marketing proves to be even more distant from the reality than I already complained about. But it is still better than WiFi in my environment.

I’m experiencing some significant brownouts during the day with the worst quality during the evening and at lunch time.
This might also be a factor, but I have opened a complaint and in a couple of months should be addressed by my electricity distribution company.

Like this:

I am doing a backup using disk2vhd from former sysinternals (now Microsoft) Mark Russinovich and I’ve found something puzzling.
The source is a W7 ultimate machine, the destination is a SMB share on a W7Pro connected to the same 1Gb/s Ethernet switch.
The two systems are not doing any other significant network activity but I see resource monitor reporting very different network use on the two sides of the transfer.

I am monitoring the destination machine from the source machine using teamviewer (great tool free for personal use) and here is the picture of the two paired resource monitors:
The source machine (on the right side) reports a network use that is significantly lower than the destination machine (on the left side).
The source machine also shows that the largest transfer alone (the backup) has a higher throughput than the total reported.

I was thinking the discrepancy might be related to a time drift in the reporting, but the graphs show that is not the case: the destination system constantly reports a higher network use.
Does anyone know if it is a known bug in W7 and how to fix it?

The process worked fine as usual and, again as usual, did not fix or improve the issue with the fan noise.
After 36 months with it I have to bear it for only 12 more months until the notebook is due to refresh.

Like this:

A month after my first installation I gained additional insight about my electrical layout.

It turns out that my apartment and my basement/underground room are not directly wired: I can turn off the meter of the apartment while I still have power in the garage and underground room.
This means that most likely only ground and neutral are shared.
In the best case the phase is hared too but has multiple elements in the middle: at least two meters.

Given the circumstances the 60Mbit/s are not too bad.
Changing the plug type in the basement fitting a new round “German” type and removing the adapter I was using earlier did not change the signal quality.

On the bad side: I tried the firmware upgrade of the adapters and now the powerline utilities can’t talk with the adapters anymore.
Yet the adapters talk to each other: I’m going to keep this setup until the endo of warranty approaches or I get a proper cat 5e cable to connect the two places.